“Shuffle the cards. Masculine? Feminine? It all depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me,” wrote the radical Jewish artist and antifascist Claude Cahun. While this fluid understanding of gender feels thoroughly contemporary, it was penned 88 years ago, in Cahun’s surrealist autobiography Aveux non avenus.
Like their still-relevant statement, Cahun and partner/artistic collaborator Marcel Moore are important forbearers for artists who reject gender binaries. That continued influence is explored in Show Me as I Want to Be Seen, a new exhibition at San Francisco’s The Contemporary Jewish Museum opening on February 7. Curated by the museum’s assistant curator Natasha Matteson, the show pairs these historical figures with the work of ten contemporary artists. While fellow surrealist Marcel Duchamp donned a feminine personae Rrose Sélavy during the same period, Cahun and Moore shattered the notion of stable gender roles all together in their photographs and photomontages. In one photograph, Cahun is a heart-adorned, androgynous bodybuilder who looks as if they work out in a cabaret instead of a gym; in another, they are the picture of butch masculinity, with close-cropped hair and a popped jacket collar. By inhabiting a range of identities in their photographs, Cahun and Moore depicted the possibility of numerous selves.
The exhibition juxtaposes Cahun and Moore’s work alongside the diversity of techniques employed by today’s artists to explore identity. Pieces on display range from Zanele Muholi and Toyin Ojih Odutola’s multiple self-portraits to Young Joon Kwak and Isabel Yellin’s amorphous bodily forms to Gabby Rosenberg’s partially abstract paintings. In particular, illegibility and ambiguity become tactics for artists to refuse static, socially imposed identities, creating the potential for a wide range of being.
them. spoke with curator Natasha Matteson about the inspiration behind the show, the power of illegibility, and how Cahun and Moore’s work speaks to today’s LGBTQ+ viewers.